"Gremlins". Had a friend ages ago who was convinced these things actually exist. As proof, she offered up all the *matches* that mysteriously "go missing". She concluded that the Gremlins are fascinated by fire and steal any matches they can find!
This, in her mind, was the ONLY way to explain the sheer volume of matches that she would lose in any given week! :>
I've had other friends similarly claim the existence of Gremlins... but, use *socks* as proof! Contending that they are amazed at these simple foot coverings and always try to steal them from laundry baskets -- hence the reason you ALWAYS have an oddball sock missing its mate!
I'll admit "changing timeout values" had never occurred to me as a similar rationalization for their existence...
That with the too many missing matches I would not take that lightly, mad as it may sound, you know. Gremlins or whatever, things do go missing sometimes in an inexplicable way for me, too - usually only to reappear at the location I initially looked for after minutes - sometimes hours - of search. Not very often but times enough to rule out being just in dreamland when looking there first. I just have no explanation about it but it does happen to me. May be not to everybody... Obviously even now if someone would tell me that even I would consider a mental issue but... it does happen to me.
Who knows, may be one day we'll discover that even "changing timeout values" can also go into that inexplicable category :D :D :D.
Just now I had another which wasted me an hour. I wish it were inexplicable but it was just Chinese.... Bought a multimeter from ebay to measure current consumptions of things, looked for an analog one which could do 1A at least; found one with 2.5A. Came with no 2.5A, just 0.25A max. OK, no time to deal with this, just put a negative ebay feedback and moved on. Used it at 250mA for the current thing (the one with the timeout values, it is a HV source). While messing with it(soldering live a 470uF at the incoming 12V past a tiny 10uH choke)the something died, consumption went way above
250mA. Unsoldered quite a few parts from the board to see what did die only to discover the deadman was the shunt resistor or something within the multimeter...... Consumption had not risen at all. I must have shorted the incoming 12V briefly - for a few tens of milliseconds - and the thing had died... They must have used 0402 resistors for the shunt :D (no time to investigate, just made an external one for 1A, back to work).
Well, when you *need* a match/light, it can quickly lead to PANIC!!
I've recently become distressed over having too many pairs of *shoes*! Seems like I can never find the pair that I am *supposed* to be wearing; always one of the pairs that I'm *not*!
Actually, L has been moving things when you're not looking; then, placing them back just AFTER you've searched a place! If you listen carefully, while you're running around "hunting", she's quietly giggling in the other room!
If you didn't notice at the time, it could have been milliseconds or
*weeks*! OTOH, when you *do* notice, it's within ohnoseconds!
Dunno. I've a couple of cheapie DVM's but rarely use them for measuring current (other than to verify charging current flowing into a battery, etc.). Always amazing how inexpensively they can make the things! There's a place, here, that frequently gives them away so you'll find people with 5 or 6 of the same make/model lying on in their shop and you KNOW where they got them! :-/
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